


fragments

by malignance



Series: you and me, the sky and the sea [3]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 02:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21500542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malignance/pseuds/malignance
Summary: A love story told in bits and pieces.
Relationships: Ben/Evie (Disney: Descendants)
Series: you and me, the sky and the sea [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1537201
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	fragments

**Author's Note:**

> think of this as an unofficial hidden moments 2.0 ... kinda ... not really

The car door opens and scuffed, black boots hit the ground.

All Ben sees is blue.

*

His head emerges from the water, clear for the first time in days.

Until he sees purple in his peripherals, then suddenly the fog settles again, somewhere behind his chest this time.

"Ben, you okay?"

 _No,_ he thinks, _I'm not._

*

Evie appears, sudden and beautiful and smiling.

"Oh! Hi. You're a bit early. She's still getting ready."

Ben tries to remember why he was here in the first place.

(Mal).

Then promptly forgets at the sight of shining brown eyes and the sound of silky sweetness.

(Evie).

*

Chaos ensues.

The wand goes from one set of hands to another.

Ben watches, in the middle of everything, adrenaline pumping in his veins.

At the end of it all, when the dragon is a dragon no longer, he looks to her.

She is laughing and crying at the same time, loose stands of blue hair sticking to her face, arms tangled with another's (not his _,_ he bitterly notes), an image of sheer beauty.

"Ben," Mal breathes, voice quivering, "we did it."

He's shaken, like being woken from a dream, and when he turns to look at Mal, he can't bring it in himself to smile properly.

"Yeah. We did."

*

He looks up from his desk, and she is there.

For a moment, he thinks it is just another one of his dreams, but she steps forward, so very very real.

The excitement thrums just beneath his fingertips. 

She is here, with him, and they are alone, and this is _not_ a dream.

"Ben, we need to talk."

Something about the way his name rolls off her tongue, something about the way her voice sounds, sends endless tingles up his spine.

"About what?"

If this were a dream, she might say something like _"Actually, I've always liked you.",_ and though she is decidedly real, he can't help but hold out hope anyway.

"... Mal's gone back to the Isle."

His dreams shatter, so easily, as reality comes breaking through.

*

There's this look in her eyes, like she wants to hear just one thing from him.

"Mal, come back with me, please. I love you."

But even if he says exactly what she wants to hear, even if he knows this is what she wants from him, it is not enough.

She inhales, slow, because she knows.

Because she can see in his eyes that he does not mean it, and could never really mean it, not even if she wants so desperately for him to.

"It's alright," She says, unbelieving now, but hoping to in the future, "you don't have to lie to me. You don't really mean that, do you?"

The surprise, worry, relief, all flood his features in an instance.

She finds comfort in how easy he is to read.

"I'm... I'm sorry."

This, this he means. This, she can tell, is truth.

"You don't have to be."

She is forgiving, for now. Accepting, for today.

Tomorrow she can breathe fire, cry her eyes out, curse the skies for giving her a first love that didn't love her back.

But for now, in this moment, she will accept it all with open arms.

He deserves that much, she knows, for having accepted her first with that same forgiveness.

*

There's this familiar cloudiness to everything he's doing, like he's being pulled along by someone else's hands, his limbs under someone else's control.

But then, she'll step into sight, beautiful and glowing, and everything will seem in place for just a short moment.

"He's been spelled!"

He hears those words, but they don't mean much to him, not when he has her in his arms. Not much else matters.

"Uma!"

A flash of purple enters his line of vision, and for a moment he is taken over again by that fogginess, that grey colour, as his love is being pulled from his grip.

He's jolted from his thoughts only when he hears the splash, but by then it is already too late.

The fight is already almost over.

Mal is this big, giant _thing_. She hovers over him, breathing fire down onto the sea below.

Still, he doesn't feel scared, but he, he had never been scared of her, of any of them, even when everybody else had been.

Seeing her like this, be begins to understand why he had tried to stay by her side for so long.

He might not have been in love with her, but he was taken by her still, by something she possessed. This strength, this intent, the look in her eyes.

"Mal! You did it! You won!"

Everybody around him cheers, as Mal looks at him, with this sad sort of gaze, and takes back the spell that was placed on him.

It's always strange, losing control of certain parts of yourself then regaining that control once more.

But as he spots _her_ , in her sparkly blue dress, talking and giggling under her breath, he thinks losing a little control might just be normal, might just be love.

*

"Evie?"

She, with her habit of taking him by surprise at any moment, enters his space with no warning.

He has to wonder if there's another emergency to attend to, or if this was just luck.

"I wanted to talk to you about something."

His hopes, again, are up.

"What is it?"

Her eyes light up, and Ben's breath is robbed from him in an instant. 

It is easy for him to lose himself in the way she speaks, in tracing the outline of her lips with his eyes.

But he listens, and tries not to focus too much on the flush of her cheeks, the point of her nose, the warmth of her eyes.

"... And so, I was wondering, if it would be alright if I got you a list?"

She's almost breathless by the end, face a pleasant shade of pink. 

He tries to convince himself the next thing he says _isn't_ simply because of his feelings for her.

"You could do more, if you'd like. More than just making me a list."

First there's shock, then concern, then finally excitement.

"Really?! I'd love to do more! As long as you're sure you really want _me_?"

_I'm in love with you._

"Yes, I'm sure." 

*

_His fingers are lost somewhere, entangled in her tresses._

_"Tell me again, how you knew."_

_Her head rests on his chest, her breath fanning out against the fabric of his shirt._

_"From the first moment I saw you, when you stepped out of the car, I knew I would fall for you. You had this kind of magic to you, not like anything I'd ever seen before, and that kind of thing, I figured, meant that you were special."_

_The sun shines down over the trees, brushes over their skin through the gaps in the leaves._

_"You took a couple detours before you actually got to me, though."_

_A breeze picks up._

_"Yes. It took me a while before I actually understood what I felt for you. But now that we're here, now that I have you in my arms. I won't be letting go."_

_Thunder, in the distance._

_**Wake up.** _

"Ben! Wake up!"

He wakes, somewhat reluctantly, his dream feeling like a distant, hazy memory.

"Sorry, I uh- I didn't realise I was so tired. How long was I asleep?"

Evie, in his half dazed state, looks even more like an ethereal vision.

"You were still awake when I left, so probably like twenty minutes? Are you not getting enough sleep at night? You shouldn't skimp on getting rest, you know."

He flexes his fingers, the sensations of it being buried in her locks still fresh on his mind.

He groans.

"I'm trying, I swear. Sometimes it's just hard for me to fall asleep when I know I have so much work to do."

She frowns, displeased by his response.

Even in her disapproving expression, he finds something in it to love.

"Well, okay, here's what we'll do. I'll finish the rest of the paperwork for today, you just focus on getting some rest. I'll even sing you a lullaby, so you better get back to sleep and make up for all that stress you've been putting your body through."

There's a protest that dies halfway in his throat when Evie opens her mouth and actually starts to sing.

It's not a particularly outstanding singing voice, but it hits all the notes just right, has this low tone to it that calms him, and is ultimately, perfectly suited for someone like him.

He thinks, briefly, before he drifts back to sleep, that this might be just as good as his dreams.

*

Evie is not oblivious. 

She's grown used to being looked at, being observed.

She knows the signs, the longing, she can recognise it.

Ben looks at her like the boys used to do back in the Isle, the way Doug used to look at her when he thought she wasn't looking.

But it puzzles her how this can be true, how the boy who'd been in love with Mal just months ago can look at her the way he does now.

Even when he drifts off to sleep, eyes closing involuntarily at his desk, sometimes she hears him mumble her name under his breath, and she has to wonder if he's looking at her even then, in his dreams.

"He's looking this way."

Jay, who is significantly less sharp when it comes to picking up on things like this, notices.

Evie sighs.

"He's always looking this way."

Part of her wishes this wasn't true, that he only gazed at her passingly, every once in a while.

But the truth is whenever they are in the same room, the same space, his eyes are somehow always on her.

She is too scared to look back.

"Don't you think you should give him some sort of reply?"

She thinks, about the way his gaze makes her feel, about the way he smiles even when she makes mistakes, about the way her name sounds coming from his mouth.

She doesn't know if she had answer to give.

"... If he really wants an answer, he'll have to ask the question first."

There's this look Jay gives her, like he knows theres more to what she's saying, like he knows her too well for that to work on him.

"If you have even an ounce of feelings for him, don't you think he deserves to know? Keeping it all inside can't be good for you."

She laughs, and curses how tactful he's become this past year.

This would've been easier, if Jay had been the clueless angry boy he was a year ago.

It might've been easier too, if she was the girl she had been before she'd come to Auradon.

Back then she was able to look at a boy without worrying about the consequences, without worrying about his feelings, let alone her own.

 _Those,_ she thinks, as Ben's blue eyes flash through her mind, _were simpler times._

"I don't know if I feel _anything_ yet. And, I'm not that brave."

Evie is not oblivious.

But just because she understands, doesn't mean she is willing to do anything about it.

*

Hades.

Evie hasn't heard the name since she was a child, since Mal had whispered under her breath that her father was a monster in an entirely different league than her mother.

Evie had almost started to believe he was just a long forgotten legend, just a myth, just a story.

But then he rears his monstrous head suddenly, and threatens the peace she'd been striving for for so long.

Mal radiates anger and hurt, Evie's own frustration cannot even come close.

Ben stands in the middle of this all, shielding all of Auradon's worries himself.

"Everybody's getting more worried everyday, I don't know what else I can say to reassure them. I feel like I might start losing hair from all this stress."

Evie can see the way this is all taking a toll on him, on his already skewed sleep schedule, his already stacked mountain of paperwork. 

So, when she says "Hey, open your arms." she's doing it for him.

He's confused, but does as she says anyway, and raises his arms up.

She steps forward quick, while he's still confused, and wraps her arms around his sides.

His breath hitches the moment she makes contact, and even after he realises what she's doing his arms are frozen, sticking out.

The effect that a simple hug is having on him surprises her a little. It's a little amusing, to know just how crazy she could've driven him this whole time.

"Uh... Evie?"

She feels his hands hover around her, like he doesn't know whether it would be okay to touch her the way she was touching him.

"Yeah?"

His arms eventually settle around her neck, his fingers dangerously close to her hair.

"What, uh- why are you-"

She laughs, a sound that gets trapped somewhere in his chest, and pretends she doesn't think anything of their proximity.

"You just looked so tired, and, well... sad, I thought you might need a hug."

His heart, that hasn't stopped racing since the moment she'd wrapped her arms around him, pauses for one long beat.

Evie hears this all, and smiles a little to herself.

"Right, um, thank you. I guess I wasn't handling everything as well as I thought I was."

She picks her head up from where it was resting against his chest, and turns to look up at him.

For a long, stubborn moment, he refuses to look down and meet her gaze.

When he finally does, his heart rate picks up again, and he realises this is perhaps the closest their lips have ever been to each other.

She grins, and watches as his eyes follow the movements of her mouth. 

"You're handling it fine, I just thought that even the king of Auradon might need a pick me up once in a while."

Plus, she realises, as she watches his cheeks colour, it might be quite fun teasing him like this.

*

Her world, as always, is on the brink of collapse.

She can only watch, half filled with rage half filled with dread, as Mal toes the line between victory and defeat.

There's yelling, there's always yelling, and then there's magic, and in the middle of it all sometimes she can hear her own heart breaking.

Maybe it's easy, to pretend that she's used to it now, the fighting and bargaining and uncertainty, but she isn't.

Sometimes people will look at her in a time of crisis, like they expect her to know what to do, like they expect her to be prepared.

She is never prepared, she is never ready.

When someone steps up, mind set on ruining the home she tried so hard to build for herself, she is never calm, she is never not devastated.

Hades and his blue flames eventually quiet, and Audrey's anger dissipates.

Evie finally loosens her grip around Jay's arm.

A celebration almost immediately kicks off, leaving her alone with her thoughts, her heart rate still out of time, breaths still shallow and quick.

_Will this be the last one?_

"Evie," Ben emerges, unexpected, looking as worn out as Evie felt, "are you okay?"

Evie doesn't have the energy to explain the tornado of thoughts in her mind, so she just pulls him down into a seated position beside her, and practically shoves her head onto his shoulder.

Having him next to her like this, getting increasingly more nervous, calms her down like nothing else.

"I'm fine. Just wondering when the next disaster will strike."

He coughs, startled by the sudden invasion of his space, his cheeks beginning to colour at the contact between them.

"Why are you so sure there'll be another disaster?"

She should've figured he would be an optimist.

"It just seems like there's always another new battle to face, another fight to win. I'm not sure I can ever fully relax."

A year ago, she would've been up all night planning for her mother to make a sudden and unwelcome appearance.

Today, she knows a little better, but still has that fear tucked away somewhere deep.

She doesn't know what she'd do if she woke up one day and her mother decided she wanted her back.

So, yes, her shoulders are tense, her eyes are open, her guard is up.

"Even so, I think you should let loose when you can, have fun when you can. If there really is a chance that things will go south again, don't you want to at least know you won't regret the days you weren't fighting for something? I think the best way to do that is to just... spend your time doing what you want to, even if the world might end tomorrow."

She stills for a moment, and processes his words.

That, at least, sounded better than her way of thinking.

"So I should just do whatever I want? Consequences be damned?"

She looks to him as she says this, counts the butterflies that erupt in her stomach, and thinks that she might try to kiss him.

"Well... you should think about the consequences a little... but as long as you're not doing anything illegal, or anything that could potentially hurt you or anybody else, you should be fine. So yeah, do whatever you want, within reason."

_Within reason._

"Does this mean I can kiss you?"

He freezes. 

Looks at her.

Drops his mouth open.

"I- you- you want to kiss me?"

She _really_ wants to kiss him.

"Yes. Can I?"

He nods, despite still being shocked.

She smiles as she leans in.

**Author's Note:**

> if u hav any ideas for what kinda ben/evie fic i should post next lmk??


End file.
